


Dying by installments.

by Kaesteranya



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-18 23:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A future of impossibility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dying by installments.

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place more than twenty years after the end of the manga: a possible look into what might have happened to Dino Cavallone and his student.
> 
> The title is taken for the 31 Days theme for April 15, 2008; the titles for the two sections are taken from the themes for January 17, 2008 and April 21, 2008, respectively.

**I can only tell you my side of the story.**

“You have at least five thousand others that you could’ve bothered if you wanted company,” he says, with no small amount of exasperation. “I don’t understand why you had to drag me into this.”

 

That sort of tone is supposed to piss people off: it’s supposed to get them to back away (or maybe to attempt to snark back), to apologize, or to just generally leave it at that and leave him alone. If there is, however, one aspect about Dino Cavallone that has not changed in the past decade or so, it’s that his goodness (read: dorkiness) is an impenetrable shield through which no snark or bitchery can pass through unscathed.

 

“But I wanted to spend it with you.”

 

“You are being childish.”

 

“I’m always childish.”

 

And Dino blinks as he says this, looking so perfectly innocent, as if he _hadn’t_ just dragged his companion halfway across the city in a poorly disguised attempt at asking for forgiveness without actually saying sorry. Sorry for what exactly, Hibari Kyouya isn’t certain. Sorry for taking you away from the rings and the boxes and the endless research. Sorry for not changing and still being the clumsy _gaijin_ bungling his way through your territory. Sorry for telling you to trust me. Sorry for ending us, for getting married, for leaving you out in the cold. Sorry for being the one person that you just can’t leave behind. But Hibari knows that Dino Cavallone would _not_ apologize for things like that, so it must be something else. Maybe it’s something as simple as an apology for suddenly turning up after years of radio silence, for talking about his dearly departed wife and the kids back home and the subtext of second chances.

 

Hibari usually keeps himself too busy for memories on a regular basis, but now that he’s stuck in Dino’s car with nothing to do but stare out the window and see everything but the scenery, there’s nothing stopping him from thinking back to the moments where he let his guard down, moments where he wasn’t at his best. He remembers the little details, details that he could sooner do without: how cold a bed is after a goodbye fuck, how strange a shower feels when there’s the salt of your tears mixing in the water, the silent support of the elevator wall, the one you leaned your back against a good twenty years ago, to quietly break down after coming to see him in his office the morning after, like the gods were all in place and everything was right with the world. Like you weren’t in his bed just the other night, knowing that this is going to be the last time and while this might not kill you everything else that’s bound to follow (keeping your distance, watching him move on) will. Like you weren’t in his bed just the other night, thinking of killing/kissing/hurting/hating/loving him all at the same time as he pressed in, pressed close, and breathed your name into your ear, like an apology. It kill you in a way that isn’t honorable, isn’t right, isn’t what you’ve been fighting for years and years to die for, and you won’t be able to walk away.

 

Hibari Kyouya thinks that really, he could’ve done without all of that, but the car ride ends before he knows it and he doesn’t really have the time to think anymore: Dino’s walking through the revolving doors of that five-star hotel he’s been pretty much blackmailed into going to, and at this point, not following him is going to look like a retreat, and the Cloud Guardian of the Vongola never retreats.

 

“If it helps, you don’t have to look at it as a date,” Dino says a moment later, when they’re seated at a table close enough to the action but far enough away to be private. “You can call it a business meeting! Tsuna will believe you if he asks!”

 

And when the blond man smiles, there’s this look to his eyes that wasn’t there in his younger years: it’s open, it’s honest, it’s hopeful, and it’s directed at Hibari at full power. Hibari avoids it by turning to the waiter hovering by their table, asking for the finest sake in the house. He is not good at dealing with honesty, at trusting in another… or more like, he has forgotten how to, with this one. Maybe he made himself forget.

 **There’s no time for catchy lines.**

They can measure the rest of their evening in the changing of performers and Dino’s one thousand and one attempts at conversation. First, the string quartet and Dino talking about the family. Second, the young-looking pianist and Dino talking about the Vongola. It’s on the third count, with the pouty-lipped and curly-haired jazz singer, that Dino succeeds in getting a reaction, and it’s only because he finally let his words stutter away, into the night music and the human noise all around them. She is singing about drinking black coffee and never knowing a Sunday in a weekday room when the one who Dino really wanted to hear finally speaks.

 

“…Why?”

 

“Eh?”

 

Hibari is looking at him, really looking at him, for the first time that whole evening: prior to that, the younger man seemed to do everything in his power to avoid his gaze without being too obvious about it, to see past him without actually backing down.

 

Dino wonders if there was ever another time when Hibari looked this beautiful to him, so flawless and so distant and so totally out of his reach. He thinks that it might’ve been back during that one mean summer in a funeral season, when he missed the chance to reach out and catch Hibari and Hibari had ended up walking away from him, out that door and off his property and right out of his life. He had been twenty-six then; Hibari had been eighteen. It had taken him three years to come in, come close and steal Hibari Kyouya’s heart; it had taken two words for him to break it, to ruin that strange, ambivalent, crooked and perfect something that they had had beyond repair.

 

The Hibari now, however, is speaking to him, and he buries the past for the moment.

 

“Why now? Why after all of this? I… I don’t understand.”

 

 _Why are you asking me to do this again?_

 

The words are hanging in the air between them, but Hibari cannot bring himself to say it and Dino doesn’t have an answer, even if he needs one.

 

The singer finishes her number, bows, departs from the stage; a round of polite clapping follows in her wake. Hibari stands up with a quiet sigh.

 

“…I tire of this, Cavallone. Call me when you actually need something.”

 

And years before, Dino might have protested, might have grabbed that hand and demanded attention and taken what he wanted, but if there is anything he has learned throughout the course of their story, their being-together-by-not-being-together anymore, it’s that Hibari has to walk away this time and he has to let the younger man do it.

 

As he returns to his hotel room, Dino changes his clothes and sinks into a bed too big for a widower. There’s no scent on those pillows, no sound in that place beyond the quiet whisper of the heater. He tells himself, just before drifting off, that there will be time, there will be time, there will be time.

 

(He could be lying to himself and he knows it, but Dino Cavallone is a man who values the need for sleep more than honesty.)


End file.
